


No Braver Than an Ordinary Man

by Draco_sollicitus



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Comic Book Violence, F/M, Secret Identities, Superhero Rey, journalist Poe, superhero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2019-10-17 05:29:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17554277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: Poe Dameron, journalist for The Resistance, stumbles across an assignment that has the potential to unveil a deep and unsettling cover-up. It appears the First Order, the world's leading tech company, might have some nefarious intentions that have been hidden for far too long.He gets tangled up in the conspiracy, his life threatened by a monster in a mask - but luckily, Takodana has another masked figure: a young woman who answers to "The Spark," who has an uncanny knack for showing up right when Poe, and the city, needs her most.Now, if only he knew what to do with his massive crush on her...





	1. Vol. 1 no. 1

**Author's Note:**

> I got a prompt on tumblr asking for a superhero AU, and then I wrote a little 1000 word blurb...
> 
>  
> 
> And then I thought about it for a few hours, wrote some outlines, and then...uh....well, here's a fic that might turn into a full fic if you all like it.

All things considered, Poe Dameron has had better days.

Right now, for instance, he’s strapped to something that was probably sheet metal at one point, his hands and legs restrained, and he’s fresh off of being tortured by Takodana’s weirdo of the week. Honestly, he feels this is probably overdue, as he’s been poking around in something sketchy for weeks now.

Leia Organa, benefactor of the Resistance, had asked his editor-in-chief to look into something, which means Poe had been told to look into something, and now, he’s attached to an unholy, slapdash torture table, tilted upright so he’s basically standing and facing a jackass in a mask and weird black cape - currently monologuing about why he needs the information on the flash drive Poe has securely hidden (and he’s almost embarrassed to say where).

But then, masked-asshole says something that has Poe interrupting (so, he’s never been one for self-preservation, whatever. Comes with the territory).

“That’s your name?” Poe blinks, not understanding, forgetting for a second that his arms and legs are sore from where he’s restrained, forgetting that his side is throbbing in a way that tells him he has more than one bruised rib. “Seriously?”

“Silence!” The masked man bellows, extending his hand towards Poe, who doesn’t even have the decency to flinch.

“All the badass names in the world, and you - you went with _Renaissance Man_?” Poe snorts, hanging against the restraints for a second, his stomach twinging uncomfortably where he’d been hit with a crackling baton. “What, do I call you Ren for short?”

“Listen here, Dameron.” The hand is back around Poe’s throat, and he gasps for breath. The guy might have a stupid name and a stupid mask, but he is fast, and unnaturally strong. “I brought you here because you _insisted_ on digging around in something that wasn’t your business, and I’d _hate_ for you to miss out on the story of the year.”

“I’ll be sure to thank you in my Pulitzer acceptance speech,” he manages to rasp, and the hand releases him. Poe coughs weakly, arms and lungs burning.

“I suppose the next time your name is in print, it will be an obituary.” Ren pulls back with the baton, clearly about to strike him again - and Poe _really_ doesn’t like that freaky baton - when:

“Long time, no see, Ren.”

“That’s not my name!” The masked idiot howls, turning around to see the newcomer.

Poe gasps, and not because he’s being strangled again - no, it’s because _she’s_ here.

He thought she was a legend.

Tall, slender, and undoubtedly strong: it’s the masked crusader who’s been rounding up Takodana’s criminals for the last three months. She’s never been caught on camera, and her existence has only been acknowledged through word of mouth testimonies, but here she is.

She seems to glow against the darkened cityscape behind her, one hand gripping the Renaissance Man’s power lines, and the other popped on her hip. Poe stares at her, well aware that he is _not_ looking his best (he can feel the blood trickling from his hairline, and the cool night air stings at his busted lip), and she looks at him once - he swears he sees concern flash in her eyes, even behind the mask.

“Let him go, Ren.” She grips the power lines tighter. “And run away now, while you still can.”

“How generous, little one.” The man walks away from Poe, who breathes a slight sigh of relief; that is, until his baton crackles to life once more and points, a clear threat, at the woman standing on the edge of the roof. “Counter offer: I let him go, and you join me.”

“How is that even a counter offer?” She sounds genuinely confused, and cocks her head at the Renaissance Man ( _God,_ that’s a stupid name). “Like, at all?”

Ren stumbles forward, weapon raised, but the woman launches off the edge of the roof, her hand still tight on the power lines: where she touches, a ball of what looks like barely contained lightning erupts. Poe watches agape - any other human being tried that, and they’d be fried. Instead, she really does glow this time, her hair lifting from static electricity as she releases the power line and flips gracefully, over Ren’s head.

She lands right behind him and raises her hand. “Last chance.”

He spins, weapon raised, and the woman sighs, reaching up and tapping him lightly. With a howl, he’s sent upwards and backwards, out of sight as he soars off the edge of the roof. She stares at where he’s vanished for a few seconds, and sure enough, a helicopter rises from the dark, Ren sprawled out, a red-haired accomplice gripping him in an upright seated position.

“This isn’t the last you’ve seen of me, you little nobody!” He screams. “I’ll destroy you!”

“I look forward to it!” She calls back brightly, waggling her fingers at him.

Poe huffs a laugh that turns into a cough, his abused ribs having had enough. She spins, having remembered that he’s here too, and sprints towards him.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry.” She rubs her hands against the brick behind him for a second, and grins apologetically. “Sorry, just want to make sure I don’t, you know…”

“Turn me into bacon?” Poe guesses with a grin, and she nods with a sweet smile.

“Exactly.” She rips through the steel restraints like they were made of tissue, and ducks under his arm to help lift him off the impromptu torture device he was strapped into. “You okay, Mr. Dameron?”

“You know my name?” Poe asks in wonder, blinking down at her. She’s only a few inches shorter than he is, but strangely small, now that he’s right next to her.

She shifts her eyes away from his before he can get a good look at them, but he knows they’re beautiful.

“Everyone in the city knows your name,” she mumbles. She guides him to the side of the roof, where an abandoned chair sits. Pulling what looks like a walkie talkie from her hip, she speaks rapidly into it. “Requesting medical assistance on the roof of the Finalizer office building. Hostage is secure, I repeat, hostage is secure. Poe Dameron requires medical assistance.” While she talks, he studies her outfit - nondescript, not at all flashy, just a black jumpsuit with bracelets that seem to glow with the same energy she’d just zapped Ren with, and a yellow cape that seems incongruously cheerful when compared with the rest of her uniform.

The last thing she said catches up with him, after he’s done staring:

“I don’t need medical assistance,” he protests, gripping his side, but she snorts and kneels down in front of him.

“Sure you don’t, big shot.” She prods at his knee, and he yelps. “That’s what I thought.”

“What’s your name?” Poe asks suddenly, unable to stop himself. The woman - she’s young, he realizes, younger than he is - looks up at him warily, her mask not doing much to obscure the look on her face. “I just … I want to know who to thank.”

“Well-” She’s cut off by the sound of footsteps pounding up the stairs. She tilts her head and smiles. “That’s your ride, Mr. Dameron.”

She stands and spins in one fluid motion, sprinting for the edge of the roof.

“Wait!” Poe calls after her. “I need to-”

“They call me the Spark,” she shouts, turning at the last second to smile at him. He stares at her, memorizing the way she looks, standing tall and proud and powerful, in front of the city that so desperately needs her. “And I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.”

Without another word, she jumps off the building with a wave. Poe shouts in surprise, but as the door next to him is kicked open by the police, he sees her soaring upwards and out of sight.

He swears he can hear laughter, carried to him on the wind, even as an EMT kneels down in front of him and begins to examine him.

“The Spark,” he whispers to himself with a grin. “Does anybody know how to pick a name these days?”

***

Poe manages to retrieve the information off the flash drive, and it’s a doozy - he and Lando lock themselves in the EIC’s office for a few hours, just going through it on the encrypted network Lando’s got rigged (old, paranoid, wonderful man).

When all’s said and done, though, Finalizer really was a front for terrorist activity, and Poe feels the thrill of victory.

“Let’s expose those bastards!” He slaps Lando on the shoulder, but his chief stops him with a single finger. “What?”

“Look here, kid.” Lando pulls up the backfiles on the flashdrive and clicks through to a financial report. “What name do you see here, on this transaction from ten months ago?”

“Starkiller?” Poe squints at it, and then realization floods his system. “No. Isn’t that-”

“The name of the new First Order project?” Lando smirks at him over tented fingers as he leans back in his chair. “Looks like you have an interview to arrange, Poe.”

“If the First Order was behind Finalizer, then that means - they’ve been hiding their support of the organization for _years_.”

“And?”

“And,” Poe drags a hand through his hair, sinking back in his own chair. “God, Lando, that means - “

“Someone else is in bed with the terrorists,” Lando supplies for him after a long pause. Poe nods, feeling weak. “Not a great sign when a captain of industry is a front for the worst possible evil, huh?”

“No, it’s really not,” Poe mumbles weakly.

The First Order’s the leading tech firm in Takodana - if not the entire country. Everyone in the world has heard of them, and half the world has their tech, whether it be phone, tablet, or computer. They do charity work, for God’s sake, supporting low income communities with technological advancements; their CEO and head designer is a visionary, who studied under Luke Skywalker himself, and if he has _any_ idea this is happening, then that could mean….

“I’ll make the call,” Poe says, standing up with a cough.

“Poe?” Lando calls after him before he exits the office.

“Yes sir?”

He turns around and catches the flash drive that Lando throws at him.

“Keep that safe. And keep it quiet - no need for any of this story to leak, in case the First Order _does_ have something to hide.”

Poe nods, the weight of the situation settling in around his shoulders. “Yes sir.” The door clicks shut behind him, and he lets go of a breath he didn’t know he was holding. As he walks through the mostly deserted office, still limping on his bruised knee, he can see a light on at the end of the hallway, a few doors up from his own office.

He passes by it - two of their interns, Finn Storm and Rey Kenobi, are sitting in front of a computer, the former looking exhausted, the latter looking incensed. They’re both absurdly good-looking, in that early-twenties kind of way that Poe remembers fondly, and they’re both absurdly talented writers. He’s lucky to have them on his team this year, but he also knows that he’s probably going to end up dragging one or both of them into this First Order mess.

Finn looks up from the computer and jumps, looking oddly guilty. Rey doesn’t flinch though, and when Poe raises a hand in greeting to Finn - he’s not mad after all, that they’re here burning the midnight oil because journalists work the weird hours no one else wants - and the younger man waves back. Rey also lifts a hand without looking up from the computer, and then she starts to type, her fingers almost a blur. Poe blinks - he must be tired if his eyes are blurring like that, and then keeps walking.

He shoots the CEO’s assistant an email - too late to call - and grabs his jacket, wincing when the fabric settles against his busted-up side.

When he leaves his office five minutes later, the light in the interns’ office is out, and the entire place is deserted, even though he swears he didn’t hear the interns leaving.

Weird.

***

It’s odd, how quickly the First Order gets back to him to confirm the interview.

He’d expected a whole song and dance routine to get him into the office, but it’s scheduled for the very next day - it seems the CEO has an opening in his schedule.

Poe heads out after informing Lando, who encourages him to take an intern or two.

So, he stops by their desks and finds that Finn’s out - on assignment with Pava - and Rey’s sitting there by herself, drumming her fingers on the desk, a document open in front of her in edit mode.

“Hey.”

She looks over her shoulder at him and smiles. “Good morning.” She’s thin in an almost worrisome way, but her smile is bright, her complexion tan and freckled, and her British accent makes the most mundane greeting sound interesting. She and Finn are both charmers, so while it’s uncommon that they got their positions despite their lack of experience, it’s not entirely surprising.

“I was wondering if you wanted to come with me to an interview,” Poe says casually, leaning against the edge of her cubicle. Rey gives him a strange look.

“Me?”

“Yes, you.” Poe snorts a laugh and shoves his hands into the pockets of his suit pants. Rey’s still giving him a confused look.

“Why me?” She fiddles with the end of her long braid, and blinks at him behind endearingly thick glasses.

“What do you mean, why you?”

“Because...” Rey waves her hands around, looking adorably flustered - _whoa there, don’t go thinking of anyone as adorable._ “Because?”

“Do you know why you’re here, Rey?” Poe tilts his head at her with a smile.

“Because The Resistance has one of the only paying internships in Takodana, and a girl has to eat?” Rey suggests, spinning in her chair to smile pertly at him, one long leg crossed over the other. It catches Poe off-guard, and all he can do for a second is blink at her. Her smile widens, and Poe swears he can feel himself get hot under the collar.

_Get it together, asshole, she’s twenty three. And your intern. That’s all kinds of wrong._

“I mean. Maybe?” Poe shakes himself, and the spell passes. “No, I mean - you’re here to learn! So, let’s go learn!” He holds a hand out to her, to pull her out of her seat, and Rey reaches for it slowly.

The second their hands touch, a strange, but not unpleasant, jolt courses up Poe’s arm. He still pulls her up and out of her seat, and he stands there, shaking his hand out like an idiot while Rey leans away to grab her bag.

“Where to, Mr. Dameron?” Rey asks in that crisp, fascinating accent of hers, and the tingling in Poe’s arm seems to intensify.

“Huh?” Poe squints at her. “You don’t have to call me that…” _Why does it sound so familiar?_

“Really? What should I call you then? Dameron?”

“Dameron?” Poe barks out a laugh as they walk towards the elevators, Rey’s kitten heels making her just about his height; their strides match easily, which is good because Poe’s been accused of being a fast walker (and a fast talker). He's still feeling the twinge in his knee from the other day's encounter with "the Renaissance Man" (jeez, that takes a lot to get used to), but he feels a compelling need to keep up with Rey. "Just Dameron?"

“You know, like, they always call each other by their last names in old-timey films. ‘ _Where are those reports, Kenobi?’_ ” Rey adopts an adorably affected transatlantic accent, one ripped from the films of the 30s and 40s. “ _They’ll be on your desk in a jiffy, Dameron!’_ Stuff like that. I’m sure you’ve seen the movies.”

Poe hits the button for the lobby, still laughing. “How old do you think I am?”

“Old enough,” Rey grins at him, and he rolls his eyes at her.

“Don’t make me regret bringing you along.”

“Gee willikers, Mr. Dameron, I didn’t mean anything by it!” Rey flutters her eyelashes at him as the doors slide open.

“Get on the elevator, Kenobi.” He’s cracking up now, and nudges her with his shoulder.

And there it is, again, that strange electricity that seems to flow from her. He’s imagining things, he has to be - Rey Kenobi doesn’t seem to think anything of their contact, after all, doesn’t blink twice when he bumps into her, but he can’t seem to shake the feeling that he’s felt this before.

He’s imagining things.

“So, where to?” Rey asks as they descend through the building.

“The First Order,” Poe answers, throwing a grin her way. “We have an interview with the man himself.”

“Not…” For the first time today, Rey’s smile falters, and her body language shifts. Poe frowns, searching her face for answers, but it’s like it’s shuttered off, Rey clearly hiding something, as though she’d put on a mask.

“We’re interviewing Ben Solo,” Poe says when she does continue. Her shoulders tense more. “Why, do you know him?”

“You could say that,” Rey grits out, the lines of her body radiating tension. Then, she takes a deep breath, and it seems to relax. “My grandfather is friends with his mother, that’s all. Knew him when we were kids. I don’t...know him very well at all, these days.”

There’s something all too careful in how she’s phrasing this, but Poe decides not to push. Ben Solo’s done something of a self-reinvention the last few years (he’d branded it as ‘burning the past,’ a phrase that evoked nothing all too great to Poe), so if Rey knew Solo as a young man, it’d make sense that she’d feel strange seeing him now.

“I can get Finn to come instead,” Poe offers awkwardly when they exit the elevator at the lobby and head to the stairwell towards the parking garage. “Bring you along to my next assignment.”

“No.” Rey shakes her head quickly, her smile back, if a bit more strangely bright than before. “No, I’m sure it will be fine, this is too good an opportunity to pass up. Lead the way, Dameron.”

“You got it, Kenobi,” he jokes, propping the door open for her. She laughs as she enters the stairwell, the sound echoing throughout the concrete structure, and Poe follows her down the steps towards the parking deck, trying to place where he’s heard that sound before.


	2. Vol. 1 no. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Poe interview Kylo Ren

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY so here's another update of this story!!!!!!
> 
> If you don't follow me on tumblr (Dracosollicitus) , you probably aren't aware that I'm trying to do one update of an older story a day leading up to May the Fourth!
> 
> 14 days; 14 updates (of non-active WIPs or old, finished stories). 
> 
>  
> 
> Here's the first one: the second chapter of the superhero au!

“Last chance to bail,” Poe comments as they pull into the numbered guest spot reserved for them. They’re right underneath the goliath First Order building, and Poe has to admit, this is the swankiest parking deck he’s ever seen. It doesn’t even look like they’re underground, the artificial light surprisingly soothing, and the ceiling a far enough distance above them that it’s not oppressive.

“Why would I want to bail?” Rey unbuckles and grabs her satchel before popping the door open. Poe does the same, and they climb out of the car at the same moment. She shoots him a grin over the hood of his sedan. “I’m not really someone who backs away from a fight.”

“Who says it’s a fight?”

He did, of course, filling in Rey with all the non-confidential details of their current assignment on the car ride over. Right now, she knows three things: they’re here to interrogate Kylo Ren and make it look like an interview while doing some of what Poe calls “first class snooping”; First Order is up to some shady business; and, it will be very bad if anyone discovers the real reason they’re here.

Rey just smiles at him and shakes her head as they cross the parking lot, the click of her heels echoing in the contained space. Once they reach the elevator, Poe swipes the card they got from the guard station out front against the scanner - it emits a short, three note chime before the doors hiss open.

Strangely enough, canned muzak starts playing as they ascend. 

“Funny,” Poe eyes the ceiling. “I was expecting Ride of the Valkyries.”

Rey giggles behind her hand before coughing and sobering up, re-shouldering her satchel. “Not Highway to Hell?” 

Poe snorts in response, but before he can pile on, the three-note chime sounds again, and they come to a stop. They’re greeted when the doors open by a tall woman with icy blond hair and icier blue eyes. 

“Welcome to First Order.” Her accent is pleasantly European, and her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “My name is Stephanie Phasma, one of Mr. Ren’s associates. You can call me Phasma. I’m here to escort you to his office.” 

She gestures for them to follow her, and her unnaturally long strides carry her across the cavernous lobby; Poe barely gets a chance to look around all the opulence as they scurry after her. The marble beneath them is a polished black, so meticulously shined that Poe can look down and see his reflection; banners of thick red velvet hang from the distant ceiling, the symbol of the First Order’s most recent update - the Knight - emblazoned in a gorgeous shade of gold.

It’s all a little Soviet, and Poe has to bite his tongue from commenting on it to Rey. Maybe later, when they’re in the car.

Phasma continues to pull away from them due to her stride, and Poe and Rey shoot each a look of amusement. 

“I thought I had long legs,” Rey whispers. Up ahead, Phasma turns over her shoulder and smirks at them, as though she heard Rey from fifteen feet away. Rey makes a face that clearly says  _ yikes,  _ and Poe couldn’t agree more.

“Hurry along, then.” Phasma waits at the main elevators, tapping her foot with a broad smile on her face. Poe gets left behind as Rey picks up the pace - his knee, still screaming in protest from his run-in with a bunch of masked people the other day, won’t let him go any faster.

Once they’re all piled into the elevator, he almost keels over from how quickly it starts to ascend. Rey catches him by the upper arm, and he doesn’t feel the jolt again, not through the fabric of his suit, but he is caught off guard by how she seems to pull him upright with very little effort on her part. Rey’s too busy listening to Phasma, who’s hinting around about First Order’s upcoming announcement, to notice the strange look he gives her.

“Thanks,” he mutters once she releases him. 

“Mhm.” She doesn’t take her eyes off of Phasma, and Poe feels the ghost of Rey’s hand on his arm for the rest of the elevator ride. 

When the doors finally open again, they follow Phasma out onto a floor of the office that seems terrifyingly fancy; a James Bond villain would work well here, Poe muses as he studies the red velvet drapes hanging from the black walls, the massive offices that hide behind locked doors with six layers of security.

“Mr. Ren’s office is right through here.” Phasma doesn’t turn around, but her voice carries well enough in the hallway, and Poe frowns at another, oddly familiar sound.

A shutter clicking.

“Rey,” he hisses, reaching out to tug at the intern’s elbow. “Are you--”

“Hmm?” Rey frowns at him, nothing in her hands.

“--Taking photos?” Her phone is nowhere in sight, and she isn’t holding a camera, only fiddling with a black, stylish ring on her middle finger. 

“No? Should I be?” She hisses back, and Phasma turns to see them lagging behind.

“Keep up.”

They hurry to follow her, Poe feeling off about the whole thing -- it feels like they’re being led to their own execution -- but Rey seems to tense with every step they take.

Phasma reaches for the door at the end of the hallway, and Poe swears he  _ sees  _ the shock that passes from the door to her hand.

“Hm.” Phasma shakes her hand out before pushing it open again, and Poe follows her, eyeing the structure warily, not trusting it to avoid shocking him as well.

“I should mention,” Rey whispers to Poe, right before they enter the office. “...Ben -- Kylo asked me on a date last year.”

“He  _ what _ ?” Kylo Ren, billionaire, darling of Takodana, philanthropist extraordinaire. “You dated him?”

“No.” Rey spits back through gritted teeth while Phasma waits for the CEO to end his phone call. Poe’s torn between listening in on the tail end of the call and giving Rey his absolutely undivided attention. “He  _ asked  _ me on a date. I said no. He didn’t like it.”

“I thought you were friends when you were kids?”

“I was friends with Ben Solo.” She makes a horrible face. “And that man is  _ not  _ Ben Solo. He...he really, really didn’t like that I said no.”

He remembers what he and Lando found on the drive, and realizes that maybe Kylo Ren’s hands aren’t as clean as he thought they would be; maybe Rey’s caught on to part of that shift in him, if he’s the kind of person who’s really capable of funding terrorist cells and mercenaries with his company’s profits.

“I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable,” Poe hedges, worried that Kylo Ren might not have been outright villainous to her, but instead disturbed her in a different, more normal human kind of way. 

“No. I’m saying -- I can distract him.” Rey smirks at him. “I can handle myself, Dameron, and if we have something we can use against him…”

“You can come in,” Phasma says, popping her head out of the doorway to look at them suspiciously.

“Excellent!” Rey chirps, smoothing out non-existent lines on her pencil skirt. She pushes her glasses up her nose eagerly. “Lead the way!”

Poe walks in after Phasma, Rey close at his heels, and he wonders if maybe they  _ should  _ distract Ren …  _ No _ .

That’s not why Rey is here, she’s here to learn how to be an investigative journalist. He can’t use his position of authority over her to encourage her to do  _ that.  _ For all he knows, she only offered in an attempt to appear useful. It sucks enough to be an intern, and now she’s an intern interviewing a guy who probably sexually harassed her.

Great.

Kylo Ren stands at his desk when they walk up, and Poe smiles at him.

“Mr. Ren. It’s a real pleasure. Poe Dameron, Takodana Daily,” he holds out a hand to shake, and it’s dwarfed by the guy’s massive grip. He feels the bones of his hand grinding together somewhat, and he blinks in surprise but doesn’t show any sign of pain. 

“Rey,” Ren greets her over Poe’s shoulder, not acknowledging Poe’s introduction more than he has to.

“Ben.”

The room gets about five degrees colder; Phasma looks at Rey with large eyes, shocked to hear the name that is  _ clearly  _ forbidden at First Order, and Ren freezes for a long moment before laughing and settling in his chair, gesturing for them to have a seat.

“Still the same, I see.” His smile is uncomfortably familiar as he directs it at Rey, and Poe sees why Rey had offered to ‘distract’ him.

She wouldn’t even have to try. It’s like she’s the only thing in the room he can see, a single-minded, terrifying focus on the slender, lovely intern, who takes a seat in her own chair looking entirely unperturbed by his attention.

“So, Mr. Ren, my associate and I were wondering if you would answer a few questions on the record about your career, and your new update: the Knight?”

“Yes, of course,” he waves a large hand, “Whatever you want, on the record. As for the update: We call it the Knight of Ren around here. Thank you, Phasma, that will be all,” He nods politely at his assistant, who gives him an unreadable look before shaking her head and stalking back through the door. 

“Hard to believe that just last year you were just a designer,” Rey says without any kind of tact, blinking behind her thick glasses. 

Poe shoots her a look of  _ slow down,  _ but she just grins at Kylo Ren, who grins right back.

“The president of the company recognized my desire to see us ascend to even greater heights, and helped me meet my full potential.”

Rey doesn’t look away from Ren, but Poe leans over and pokes her arm. She startles and then begins to write rapid, shorthand notes in the pad of paper she brought with her. Ren watches her almost hungrily as she writes, and Poe finds himself getting even more uncomfortable about the dynamic between them. 

_ Why hadn’t she said something back at the office?  _

She had, to be fair, but she’d brushed it off, and so had he. This though. This was … unnatural.

“Do you have any sort of vision for the future direction of First Order that you’d be willing to share with us?” Poe asks, eyeing Rey for any sign of discomfort. She shows none, and when he looks back to the subject of their interview, he finds Ren scowling at him. 

The expression is gone in the blink of an eye, and Ren stands and gestures for them to follow him.

“I suppose I can share this with you … two. For old times’ sake.” The last part is said for Rey’s benefit, clearly, but she jumps to her feet, clutching her paper with a bright smile that leaves Poe a little off-kilter. 

Ren looks pleased to see her so happy, and he walks to a display at the side of the office, his hands clasped behind his back.

“Oops!” Rey drops her pencil on the way to follow him, and Ren looks over his shoulder, seeing her duck down to grab it. He smirks -- Poe really hates it -- and turns back around, shaking his head slightly.

“Still clumsy then?”

“Still clumsy,” Rey reports cheerfully, grabbing her pencil and standing up, bumping against Poe who’d held back to help her to her feet. “The desk,” Rey mouths at Poe, jerking her head to the side. He looks over to see that there’s a document open on Ren’s computer, one he hasn’t shut down in his eagerness to show off for Rey. 

She makes a horrible face at him and then traipses off to follow Ren.

“Whoa, Fancy-pants,” Rey laughs, standing at Ren’s elbow. She looks over her shoulder and glares daggers at Poe and then the computer before turning her face up to Ren. “You designed this?”

“Yes.” He sighs and flicks through the display, showing off a series of buildings. “They’re solar-powered Affordable Housing Units that we intend to build on the east shore of Takodana. We’ll use lumber from the nearby forest to construct.”

“Isn’t that forest protected under state law?” Rey asks sharply, frowning at Ren. 

Poe begins to shuffle towards the computer, his phone on, the camera app open and ready to go, and held behind his back where Ren can’t see it. 

“It was,” Ren answers idly, reaching up to flip through a series of screens until the forest appears. “I convinced them otherwise. After all, what’s more important than progress?”

“But progress for who, Ben?”

He does stiffen this time at his name, and it takes him a few seconds to relax; in that time, Poe freezes as well, phone clutched behind his back, the document he wants to study open and waiting. Then, Ben smiles down at Rey and chuckles, shaking his head.

“Still clumsy and still a spitfire. Some things never change.”

“And some things do, whether or not we want them to,” Rey shoots back. Rather than be irritated, Ben mistakes her ire for nostalgia and sighs. 

“How long have you been interning at Takodana Daily?” He asks her.

Poe clicks the side button of his camera, firing off a round of photos that he prays are focused enough that they can clean them up at the office. He pockets his camera and walks back towards Rey and Ren as she answers the question.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she looks behind Ren to see Poe approaching. “Four months, I guess?”

“Four months sounds right,” Poe agrees, although he knows it’s been three months and two weeks since Rey started, remembers her first day clearly, when she literally fell off the elevator when her foot caught in the lip of it, and into his arms.

_ “Good catch,” she’d said coyly, smiling up at him. He’d almost dropped her in his haste to hide how much he blushed.  _

He tries not to think about that day; he remembers how much  _ more  _ embarrassed he’d been when the girl he’d been uncomfortably attracted to turned out to be thirteen years his junior  _ and  _ an intern. 

“Well, they’re very lucky to have you.” Ren purses his lips and scowls at Poe before returning his attention to the screen in front of them. “Now, if you look here, you can actually see where we put in the plans to have our fiber optic system running through where they can’t be disrupted for virtually any reason…”

Poe tries to listen, he really does, but he can’t stop looking around the office for any more clues on Ren’s mysterious past. 

He sees framed degrees from business schools and the Coruscant Institute of Technology, cold, modern art, fencing swords hanging from the wall, and even, confusingly, a grand piano in the corner. Ren is a jumble of things, but none of it exactly points towards  _ nefarious connections to the underworld.  _

The rest of the interview goes fairly smoothly, with Rey asking most of the prepared questions, and having the freedom to ask some less than polite ones, and soon they head back the way they came, this time accompanied by Ren and not Phasma.

“It was good to meet you. Thanks for your time, Mr. Ren,” Poe says, offering his hand for another bone-crushing shake. 

“I’m sure I’ll see you again, Mr. Dameron,” Ren’s smile is all teeth. “I do love a healthy relationship with the press.”

_ I’m sure.  _

“Rey.” Ren bows, ridiculously enough, looking like some weird Mr. Darcy -- more like Mr. Rochester, Poe corrects sourly, or Heathcliff -- and Rey looks taken aback for a second before she brazenly curtsies.

Ren grins wildly in response, and stands like a hulking statue, hands clasped behind his back, eyes fixed to Rey’s face until the elevator doors slide shut.

When they do, Rey releases a breath and staggers back against the wall. “Hooooo-ly--”

“Holy  _ shit, _ ” Poe finishes for her, eyes wide. “He was so --”

“Creepy.” Rey closes her eyes and nods. “Would you believe me if I said that wasn’t the worst interaction he and I have had in the last year?”

“How could it get much worse than that?” Poe asks wonderingly, but Rey just shakes her head where it’s resting against the wall as they descend towards the lobby and their freedom.

“Trust me...you don’t want to know.”

Poe has nothing to say to that, but when the doors open, they both hurry for the car, and say nothing more on the matter until they’re back at the office, where Rey hands him her notes before disappearing in the direction of her desk. 

He watches her walk away, sees Finn Storm perk up -- he can’t see Rey’s face, but he does see the cloud of worry that crosses Finn’s handsome face -- and when she sits down at her desk and buries her face in her hands, Poe regrets that he isn’t there to comfort her, even as he turns and heads into Lando’s office to report on what they’ve gathered. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK AND YES I KNOW THIS PROBABLY NEEDS SO MANY CHAPTERS 
> 
>  
> 
> (Imagine how messy it will get when Poe realizes he's in love with The Spark AND his intern...)
> 
>  
> 
> Have a story in mind that you'd like to see an update of during the next two weeks? Stop by [my inbox](https://dracosollicitus.tumblr.com/ask) and let me know

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! xox


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